


Susan Vitalis and the Orb of Flame

by Heather Dursley (Keolah)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Bullying, Gen, Original Character-centric, United States
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2006-06-18
Updated: 2006-07-16
Packaged: 2017-11-13 11:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keolah/pseuds/Heather%20Dursley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan Vitalis's first year at Walton Academy of Magic. A young American witch going to a school in the United States must deal with a powerful artifact fueled by its bearer's emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introducing Susan Vitalis

Mary busied herself cleaning and feeding the young babes. They would all be sent off to new homes with loving adoptive parents with any luck, but she took good care of them while they were hers, as if they were her own children. Her kids were long grown and gone now, and had children of their own.

The door opened and Mary looked up from what she was doing to see the couple who had entered the adoption agency. They were clean and well-dressed, although there was something a bit odd about their clothing, like it went out of style decades ago. "Hello," said the man a bit stiffly. "We're here to adopt a child."

"Of course, of course," Mary said. "There's just some paperwork to fill out, and you can choose which one you would like..."

But the couple was intent upon the oldest child in the batch, a girl almost two years old. She had been here for almost all her life, and had been pointedly avoided by all the other prospective parents and the other children. "We would like that one," said the man, pointing to the girl. "What is her name?"

"We call her Susan," Mary told them. "You could, of course, choose another name for her if you want--"

"No, Susan will do just fine," the woman said firmly. The man proceeded to get the paperwork filled out as the woman went over to the child. "Hello there, Susan. How are you?"

Susan glanced up for a moment from the blocks she was playing with. She was a cute child, with short blond hair and blue eyes. She didn't bother to reply, however, simply going back to what she was doing before quietly. She had carefully arranged the colorful blocks into a little tower in front of her.

* * *

"I have a little sister now?" said Timothy the day that his parents came home with Susan.

Susan clambered across the room to observe her new big brother curiously. Their father, Frederick Vitalis, said, "Yes, Timothy. Meet your new sister, Susan."

"Does this mean I have to share my room?" Timothy complained.

"No, Timmy, Susan will sleep in the spare room," said their mother, Alicia.

Frederick pulled off his coat and hung it in the closet. "I'm going upstairs to change. I can't wait to get out of these tight pants. How can Muggles stand to wear them? Are they all poorly endowed or something?"

"Fred!" scolded Alicia. "Not in front of the kids!"

Fred smirked and disappeared up the stairwell. Alicia said, "Now, I'm going to go fix us some dinner. Play nice, kids."

Timothy sat down in front of the staring toddler and stared back at her intently. He was seven years old, and this little one couldn't be more than one and a half or two. "So," he said to her. "Do you talk yet, or do you just look at people funny?"

"Yes," Susan said, a little indignantly and pouting a bit.

"Oh, you  _do_  talk," Tim said with a bit of a smirk. "Well, I'm Timothy, and I'll be your brother, I guess." She continued to look at him funny. He thought for a moment and said, "Hey, watch this," and pulled out his father's wand that he had pilfered while he wasn't looking, and waved it around a bit. Colored sparkles cascaded from the tip of the wand impressively. Susan's eyes went wide and she clapped in approval.

"Timmy, you aren't doing magic again are you?" called his mother from the kitchen.

"No, mother," Tim said with a sigh, furtively putting the wand away with an innocent look.

* * *

"Why can't I go to school too?" Susan complained.

"You're only five years old, Susan," her mother explained patiently. "You can't go to Walton Academy of Magic until you're eleven."

They walked down Fifth and a Half Street in downtown Eugene, a section of the city dedicated to wizards and witches, which the Muggles couldn't get to or even knew existed. Shops lined the street offering all manner of things that might be useful to people of magical inclination. Alchemical components, enchanted items of all sorts, broomsticks, books, clothes. Finally they came to the shop selling wands, and Alicia ushered them inside.

"I want a wand too!" Susan pleaded.

"Not until you're eleven," Alicia told her firmly.

As Tim was fitted and tried various wands, Susan stood back watching absently, but more staring at the collection of different wands. Long ones, short ones, thick ones, narrow ones, made from different types of wood, and each one seemed to have its own feel that she could tell without even touching it. Not that her mother would let her touch them anyway. But one of them seemed to call to her, a shorter one made of pale-colored wood sitting on one of the lower shelves.

"Ah, an excellent choice," the shopkeeper was saying to Tim. "Eleven and three-quarters inches, pine and griffin hair. That'll be six galleons and five sickles."

As her mother was distracted counting out the coins, Susan saw her chance, and snatched up the wand. As she waved it in the air triumphantly, brilliant golden sparks exploded from the end of the wand and around the room, showering the little wand shop in yellow light. "Susan!" her mother scolded, almost dropping her coin pouch in surprise.

"It appears that that wand has quite the affinity for the little girl," said the wand maker with interest. "Maple with a core of unicorn hair, seven inches long."

Susan sat on the floor holding the wand in her hands, grinning like a cat who had just eaten the goldfish. Alicia sighed in frustration, but gave in, saying, "Fine, I'll buy that wand for you too, but I'll lock it up and you aren't to touch it until you're eleven. Understand?" Even as she said it, though, she knew that it would not be obeyed regardless.

Susan reluctantly surrendered her wand to her mother, who paid for the two wands and herded the children outside to collect the rest of Timothy's school supplies. There were books to be bought, robes to be fitted and equipment to be purchased.

"And neither of you are getting your own broom, period," Alicia said firmly. "Maybe next year if you're good, Timmy."

Susan longed to touch her wand, to hold it in her hands, but she consoled herself to waiting until they had gotten home, lest her mother change her mind and take it back to the shop while they were still here. Obtaining the rest of Tim's school supplies went uneventfully, and they returned home again via Floo.

But Susan's hopes were dashed when her mother deliberately locked away her precious wand in the chest where the family valuables were kept, the ones that they kept in the house and not the bank at least. "Nice and safe," her mother said. "Now, how about some dinner?"

* * *

Susan was determined to learn what she could as she could, and from the minute she could read she was poking through her parents' books on every subject she could find. She didn't understand most of what she read, and they kept the actual spellbooks away from her, but she absorbed what she could. Sometimes she even managed to locate their real magic books and pored over them, at least until they caught her and moved them somewhere else.

They tried to keep her busy with chores, since they didn't have any house-elves, and studying basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, but she still found time to poke around the house for things that they might be hiding. There was only so much space in the house, after all, and even if it seemed awfully big to a little girl, there were only so many places things could be hidden.

She was seven years old, however, before she finally located the key to the chest in the attic, hidden away so neatly that she stumbled upon it while cleaning almost by accident. It was hidden between the cushions of her parents' bed. With excitement, she realized what the little brass key must be, and scrambled as quickly as she could up to the attic before anyone noticed she wasn't cleaning the bedroom.

Susan put the key into the keyhole of the old chest and tried it. It clicked, and she pulled it open to reveal numerous interesting pieces of jewelry and magical items, but the only one she was interested in was her wand. She snatched it up and just held it beaming for a moment. But realizing after a moment that her mother might check back in the bedroom and notice she wasn't there, she turned away and locked the chest again, and tucked her wand carefully into her sleeve, then went to place the key back where she had found it.

Hurriedly finishing up the cleaning, she heard her mother call, "Have you finished cleaning yet, Susie?"

She hated when her mother called her Susie. "Yes," she called back. "I'm going to bed now."

"Sleep well, honey." Just as well that her mother did not come up to check on her or tuck her in, but nonetheless she curled up in her bed and waited for at least half an hour to make sure she wouldn't anyway.

Susan crawled out of bed and pulled out her wand. She was too excited to be tired. She brought to mind some of the spells from the books she had been reading, thinking to finally have a chance to try them out. "Lumos," she whispered, and obediently the end of her wand lit up, casting a pale light upon her room. Susan smiled broadly. It worked!

Hearing her father's heavy footsteps up the stairs, she tried to figure out how to put the light out, but couldn't remember the word. She sighed softly and clambered for the window, and climbed out onto the second-story balcony. She looked nervously to the door, but it showed no signs of opening, and the curtains to her parents' room were pulled shut.

"Lumos," she said again quietly, and the light on her wand brightened. She quietly scampered for the stairs and climbed down into the backyard. "Lumos, Lumos, Lumos!" she said more boldly now, and the yard was lit with bright light. She giggled cheerfully, but she couldn't remember any other spells. She'd have to go back inside and find her parents' spellbooks again. Susan darted for the door to the kitchen, but found it to be locked.

Wait, she thought, wasn't there a spell she had seen to unlock a door? How did that go again? "Loramora!" she said, pointing the wand at the door. The wand made a popping and fizzling sound that definitely didn't sound like a door opening. Frowning, she tried again, "Lolomoro!" Foul-smelling black smoke erupted from her wand, and she coughed and waved her hand vigorously. This wasn't working, she thought. One more try. "Lomilori!"

An explosion knocked her off her feet and sent her to land on her back in the grass, and her wand, still glowing, went flying from her hand. Stunned, she stared up at the stars for a long moment. She thought she could hear the frantic sound of running from inside the house. She didn't feel like moving. She wondered if anything was broken. She couldn't feel anything.

"Oh, Susan, what have you done..." Susan was hardly aware of her father picking up her wand and taking it off somewhere, or her mother performing healing spells on her and carrying her back upstairs.

* * *

Afterward, they'd locked up her wand even more securely than before, and she didn't go trying to find it again. It took her a week to fully recover from that, but at least the door had been more easily repaired with a spell. Her parents hoped she'd learned her lesson about playing around with magic like that, and at least she hadn't been too badly hurt in the process.

Even if she didn't try that again, she diligently kept up her chores and her studies on the hopes that soon she would be able to go to Walton. When Timothy came home in the summer, she asked him all manner of questions about what things were like at school and what he had learned. But while he told her a lot of fabulous stories that were no doubt exaggerated, he would often tell her, "Wait and find out for yourself," teasingly, with a mischievous grin.

So she waited. The years rolled by agonizingly slowly. She was eager to finally really learn magic, and to meet other people her age. She didn't talk much with the Muggles that lived near them. Their neighbors thought they were a bit odd and tried to avoid them whenever possible. The family next door raised horses, though, and Susan would occasionally go over and take carrots or sugar cubes to them secretly, but when the Muggles caught her they would shoo her home again.

Then, finally, upon her eleventh birthday, an owl arrived with a letter addressed to her. She almost tripped over herself running to tear it open and read it in eagerness.

"You have been accepted to Walton Academy of Magic," she said slowly, reading the letter aloud herself. "Yay! I'm going to Walton!" She did a pirouette and danced around the room, hugging her parents and brother excitedly.

* * *

They went off to Fifth and a Half Street to purchase supplies for herself and Timothy. It was Timothy's seventh year, and he was wearing a T-shirt that said, "My wand is longer than your wand." Their mother had rolled her eyes disapprovingly of the shirt, but didn't say anything or demand that he remove it.

"Oh, look, mom!" Timothy said excitedly, pointing. "They've got a new model of broom out!" He darted over that way.

Alicia smiled in exasperation at the teenage boy and said to Susan, "Here's the clothing shop, go on in and get fitted for your robes, we'll be back in a few."

Susan strolled inside confidently. She'd been to Fifth and a Half Street many times before, and it was as familiar as her own backyard. There was another girl who looked to be about her age getting fitted right now. The seamstress glanced over to her briefly and said, "Another one for Walton? I'll be with you in a moment, dear."

She nodded to the seamstress politely and smiled to the girl who was being fitted. "Is it your first year too?" The other girl nodded nervously. "Me too," Susan said. "Do you know what house you'll be in yet?"

The girl looked confused and shook her head. "No."

"I guess nobody knows for sure, but I know I'll most likely be in Mevrasi or Handene," Susan said. "My brother's in Handene." The other girl continued to look at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. "Oh, my name's Susan. Susan Vitalis. How do you do?"

"There you go, all finished up," said the seamstress. "Now for you," she said, motioning up Susan.

The other girl didn't immediately leave, though. "I'm Penny," she said to Susan.

Susan held out her arms and let the magical tape measures do their job. "Nice to meet you, Penny. Do you like Quidditch much? My brother plays. He's a pretty good Chaser. But my parents won't let me have a broom until I'm older. I guess they're afraid of me hurting myself or something."

Penny just stood there quietly looking at her as if thinking of what to say. The seamstress proceeded to get her robes ready. Penny looked away and glanced over toward the street nervously.

Susan went on, saying, "Are you here with your parents? My mom and dad went off with my brother to look at the new brooms."

"No," Penny replied quietly. "They just dropped me off."

"Well, you can hang around with me if you like," Susan said. "I'm sure my parents won't mind. We can be friends!" She'd never had a friend her age before, and there weren't many wizards around where they lived just outside Eugene.

"Okay!" Penny said, smiling for the first time.

Alicia returned shortly, without Fred or Tim, and went to pay the seamstress and collect Susan's clothing. "Mom, this is Penny, my new friend," Susan said brightly.

Her mother looked down at the other girl, who took a step away shyly, and said, "Ah, it's good that you're meeting people your own age! Do you need to get your school supplies too, Penny?" she asked the girl. "Where are your parents?"

"They just dropped me off here," Penny repeated softly.

"Well, Susan knows her way around here," Alicia said, pulling out some money from a pocket and handing it to Susan. "We'll meet you back at the ice cream parlor at one. Have fun with your new friend, and don't leave the main street now." She went off to the next shop to look at some enchanted teapots that were for sale.

"Come on," Susan said. "I've got my books to get next, and the bookstore is just down the street."

Penny said, "Yeah, I've gotta get my books too..." She let Susan drag her along down to the bookshop.

As they went and looked up what books they would need for their first year in school, Susan continued rambling, heedless that Penny didn't seem to be understanding half of what she was saying and just glad for someone to talk to. "I always wondered what my real parents might have been like. I'm adopted, you see. Maybe they were great Aurors, or maybe they were Death Eaters from Europe, or something..."

"My dad's a lawyer," Penny put in. "My mom's a teacher."

"Wizard law must be very interesting," Susan said. "What does your mom teach?"

"Biology," Penny replied flatly.

"Biology?" Susan repeated with a touch of puzzlement. That wasn't a term she was familiar with. "What sort of magic is that?"

"It's not magic," Penny explained. "She's not a witch."

"Oh, she teaches in a Muggle school then?"

Penny looked puzzled. "Muggle?"

"You know, people who aren't like us, the ones who don't have magic," Susan said. "Strange thought, isn't it? I wonder how they get on without it. But your dad's a wizard lawyer, isn't he?"

Penny shook her head. "My dad's not a wizard. He's a -- Muggle lawyer," she explained, hesitating over the unfamiliar word.

"Oh!" Susan said. Suddenly it all made sense. "You must be a Muggle-born then. No wonder you're so confused. You don't know anything about any of this!"

However, a cluster of boys nearby had overheard her and approached. They looked to be about their age as well. "Oh, we've got a little Mudblood here, then. How cute!"

"Hey, you leave her alone!" Susan piped up.

"And who are you, girl?" their apparent leader demanded, glancing over at her with a smirk.

"I'm Susan Vitalis, and she's my  _friend_. Leave her alone, or I'll hex you."

"Blood traitor, then," he replied, spitting on the ground. They wouldn't do anything to them on the open street here, she figured. Not that she knew any hexes severe enough to really deter them, nor had really tried casting them before.

Susan snorted at them and took Penny's arm. "Come on, let's get our books. They aren't worth our time."

The boys jeered at them as they walked off. "Haha! The little girls are scared! They're running away!" Susan didn't give them the dignity of looking back at them and pushed inside the door to the bookshop.

"Who were those boys?" Penny asked once they were inside. "And what were those nasty things they were calling us?"

"I don't know who they were, but I imagine we'll find out soon enough," Susan said, looking over her list and going to locate the books they'd need for Walton that year.

"They wouldn't have actually done anything to me, would they?" Penny wondered, sounding a bit scared.

"I don't know. Maybe," Susan said with a shrug. "I doubt it, with all the people around. My mom did tell us to stay to the main street. Who knows what they might've done if they'd caught us in the back alleys? Jinxed us halfway into next week, no doubt."

They finished up collecting their school supplies and went over to the ice cream parlor and enjoyed some ice cream. Alicia offered to pay for Penny's ice cream cone, but she politely refused and insisted on paying herself.

"My dad gave me plenty of money," she said dryly, and added almost inaudibly at the end, "About all he gave me." She packed up her things and got up and headed for the door. "Thanks for being my friend, Susan. I have fun today. I'll see you at school next month." She waved happily and left.


	2. Walton Academy of Magic

"Have fun at school, kids," Alicia said, waving to Susan and Timothy. "We'll miss you."

"Don't get into too much trouble while you're there," Fred warned them with a wry smirk.

"I promise not to get expelled," Timothy said, saying nothing about avoiding doing anything that wouldn't actually get him expelled.

The students were piling into a bright purple bus that didn't look at all as if it could hold them all from the outside. As Susan and Tim approached the bus, Penny came running up to them. "Susan, I'm here!"

Susan smiled and waved to her friend. "Let's get seats on the bus together."

Penny looked oddly at the bus and said, "How is it going to fit everyone?"

"Well, magic, of course," Susan replied.

When they stepped aboard the bus, it became pretty apparent that it seemed much larger on the inside than on the outside. There were rows upon rows of comfortable-looking seats, and Penny stumbled a bit in surprise as she looked at it. Someone behind them almost ran into her when she paused and said irritably, "Hey, keep moving!"

Susan dragged her along and took some seats by a window, and said, "I'm so excited! Finally going to Walton!"

"I can't believe I'm going to learn magic," Penny said. "I keep thinking I'm going to wake up at any moment and find that the last few months have all been a dream."

Susan put her hand on her shoulder reassuringly. "It's not a dream, Penny. It's very, very real, and I'm sure one day you'll be a great witch."

The students settled down into their seats, talking quietly amongst themselves until a middle-aged witch near the front of the bus rang a bell, calling for their attention. "We will be leaving in five minutes for Walton. Please try to remain seated unless you require use of the lavatory near the back of the bus. We will be arriving in Walton in about an hour."

Shortly, everyone was aboard and seated and quieted down somewhat, and the bus headed out toward Walton. Although it seemed to move on the Muggle streets, the Muggles did not seem to see it at all, or think it was anything unusual. Penny peered out the window as if trying to trace where they were going, but ended up getting hopelessly confused as the bus took a twisted, convoluted route through the streets that seemed to make no sense whatsoever.

"Oh, look, it's the blood traitor Vitalis and her Mudblood pet," said a voice from behind them. Susan peered over the back of her seat and made a face. Two of the boys who had harassed them on Fifth and a Half Street had scooted into the seats behind them and were poking at them annoyingly.

"Why don't you pick on somebody your own size?" Penny snapped back at them, surprising Susan with her sudden confidence.

"Or what, Mudblood?"

Tim's voice from behind them said, "Or I'll tell Mrs. Herrera that you've been bothering your classmates and calling them dirty names." He was sitting in the row behind the first year boys, and one of his friends was with him as well. It was Frank Price, a muscular seventeen year old who Susan recognized as one of the Beaters on Tim's Quidditch team.

The boys grumbled a bit and sunk low in their chairs unhappily, but they apparently didn't want to mess with a pair of seventh years, so they quickly skulked back to their own gang again. "Thanks, Tim," Susan said as Tim took the seat the boys had vacated.

"Heh. No problem. What's a big brother for?" He ruffled her hair playfully.

The rest of the trip passed uneventfully, and they rode out of the city and through the forest and arrived soon enough in the little town of Walton. The school lay along the highway running through mountains and forests from Eugene to Florence. It had been founded in 1884, making it a very new school to the wizarding world. To Muggles passing along on the highway, they saw only the old Walton store, nothing remarkable about it. They had no idea what lay beyond the false exterior and strong spells of protection.

The bus pulled off the highway and past the store, out of sight and out of mind, and came to a stop some way from the highway. Mrs Herrera stood up at the front of the bus and announced, "We have arrived at Walton. Everyone please file off the bus in an orderly manner. First years, please wait to be escorted to the school beside the mermaid fountain."

The students proceeded to file off the bus more or less as they were told, only pushing and teasing one another a bit as they came out into the town of Walton once again. The large fountain Mrs. Herrera had mentioned was not difficult to find, consisting of a statue depicting three merpeople spouting water from their mouths into a wide basin. Mrs. Herrera stood nearby as the first year students gathered around the fountain, but the older students went on ahead.

Several large, colorful pieces of cloth covered in exquisite patterns were brought out, and Susan nudged Penny and said, "Look! Flying carpets!"

The carpets were arranged and five first year students were carefully ushered onto each one. Susan took a seat next to Penny on a carpet along with an overweight boy, a Latino kid with glasses, and a boy with freckles. One by one, the brightly colored carpets rose into the air and above the treetops, and as they slowly moved on toward the school they got an excellent view of the area. Nestled in a little valley the trees parted to reveal gardens and greenhouses, and over to the left past an open area they saw the Quidditch pitch with the stands around it for seating. Beyond that stood the school itself, all brick and wood standing several stories tall.

"Wow!" Penny breathed. "It's almost like a castle, except not really."

Susan giggled at her description of it. The carpets took a full circle around the school and came around to the front again and landed in the yard before the main doors. They came down hovering a foot above the grass, and the students hopped off and were led into the school by Mrs. Herrera.

The older students were already sitting at seven long tables in the main hall, each table decorated in different colors and bearing the symbol of the House they represented. A red flame, a black hourglass, a silver sword, a green leaf, a blue book, a white feather, and a gold coin. At the front of the room, a dusty wide-brimmed hat was sitting on a stool. Once all the first years were inside, Mrs. Herrera called for silence, and the hat inexplicably began to sing.

 _Over a hundred years ago, seven wizards came_  
From all about this great wide world to come together here   
To carry on the teaching and to pass along the flame,   
And provide a haven where their pupils need not fear.   
  
The first was Vindicus Venari, willful, proud, and great.   
The fire of passion burned in him, and magic was his love.   
He cared for his own and nurtured them, but had much rage and hate.   
He selected students whose emotions rose above.   
  
Then came Tamerlane Telana, patient, old, and wise.   
Her students thus she picked of those who listened and took things slow,   
Although she'd come to change the world, to all things comes a price -   
Consider long the road you take before you choose to go.   
  
Now Cristobal Korata was a noble, valiant man.   
His students he chose for honor and the courage in their hearts,   
Unafraid to do what's right when troubled times began.   
Always he and his would stand boldly 'gainst the Dark Arts.   
  
A peaceful, quiet, honest man was Andrew Astakal   
Who picked his students for respect and balance in their souls.   
To let the seasons come and go was only natural.   
He taught there is far more to life than written on the scrolls.   
  
Nadia Glemarn was a meditative kind.   
She'd take her time and let the world flow about her fast.   
Her students learned the greatest power comes from in your mind.   
To change the world, they'd change themselves, and ever they would last.   
  
And Solana Handene was a flighty, playful witch   
Whose students saw in every thing a glimmer of truth and joy,   
To carry love of life themselves, the lives they would enrich,   
To flit about and bring a smile, but some they might annoy.   
  
Last, Pajik Mevrasi had his cunning and his wit.   
He picked his pupils cleverly, not for brilliance or for might,   
But for their willingness to do far more than they'd admit.   
That they succeed by any means stood more than being right.   
  
So step forth, you, and try me on, that I may take a peek   
Into your heart, into your head, to see what I can see   
And figure out where you might go for what each House may seek.   
And when we're through, turn 'round and greet your school-year family.

As the old hat finished its song, Mrs. Herrera announced, "First years, please come forward to be sorted when your name is called. Anthony, Pardus!"

The overweight boy who had sat in front of Susan on the carpet scuttled forward and put on the hat. After a few long seconds, the hat called out, "Astakal!"

The students sitting at the table decorated in green applauded, and Pardus bounced over to them happily. One by one, Mrs. Herrera announced the names of the first year students, and they each repeated the process, coming up and putting on the hat and being sorted into their respective Houses.

"Blake, Jonathan" became a Telana and "Blake, Vanessa" became a Glemarn. "Brightman, Christina" got sorted into Mevrasi.

"Hawkins, Casey!" A girl with dirty blonde hair went up and become a Korata.

"Johnson, Penelope!" called Mrs. Herrera. Penny grimaced a bit at the name, but went forward and put down the hat over her head as the others had done.

Susan about held her breath as the hat seemed to think deeply over the decision. Finally, it shouted, "Mevrasi!" Susan was a bit surprised at that, as in the brief time she had known her, the Muggle-born girl hadn't really displayed any really Mevrasi tendencies, but Penny seemed content enough as she took her seat at the Mevrasi table. More students continued to be sorted as Susan waited for her name to be called.

"Nichols, Armin!" Susan recognized the scrawny boy that went up as her first cousin on her mother's side. He became a Glemarn.

"Roblero, Fidel!" The Latino boy she had seen earlier went up and became a Korata.

"Tratch, Jami!" Mrs. Herrera announced. Susan recognized this one. It was the boy who had harassed her and Penny at Fifth and a Half Street and on the bus. She hoped that he wouldn't get Mevrasi as well, for Penny's sake if she didn't get put there too.

"Venari!" declared the hat. Jami Tratch gave a broad grin as he joined his friends at the Venari table.

"Vitalis, Susan!"

This was it. She darted up eagerly and grabbed the hat and put it down over her head. "Hmm, interesting," whispered a voice in her ear. "A good deal of power there. A fine amount of loyalty as well. Not always very patient, though. And with a certain disregard for the rules, I'll have to say Mevrasi!" This last word was shouted aloud to the room.

Susan beamed as she pulled the cap off her head and ran over to the Mevrasi table, hugging Penny enthusiastically. "You got Mevrasi too!" Penny said. "Why did that singing hat's song sound so critical of them - us - though?"

"I guess every House has its good bits and its bad," Susan said.

An older student from across the table leaned over and said, "Yeah, don't let it bother you. People call us sneaky, manipulative, backstabbing, untrustworthy..." He snorted softly. "Maybe some of us are, certainly, but not everyone. No, we're smart. Not like Glemarn is smart. We're smart enough to not have to be smart. We're the creative, innovative sorts who look beyond established methods and rules and come up with original ways of doing things nobody ever thought of doing before."

"You make doing what you're not supposed to do sound so classy," Penny observed.

They were called to silence again, a middle-aged wizard at the staff table stood up and said, "Before we begin the welcoming feast, I have a few words to say. First of all, I bid welcome to all new and returning students this year. As many of you may know already, I am your Principal, Dionysius Antares. I hope you all learn much this year, and remember to abide by the rules." He gave a sidelong glance over toward the Mevrasi table and added, "Even you, Mevrasis." The kids at the Mevrasi table sniggered a bit at that. "And now, let us feast."

The tables were suddenly filled with a wide array of delicious-looking foods of all sorts. Penny looked startled for a moment, but proceeded to help herself to the food after a moment. The boy across the table chuckled softly at her and said, "By the way, my name's Rudy Blake. It's my fourth year. I hope you do well in Mevrasi. For all they might say about us, we do look after our own. I remember what it was like being a first year myself. It seems like yesterday I was walking through those doors, confused as could be."

"Are you Muggle-born too?" Penny asked.

Rudy shook his head. "Not exactly, but I was raised by them. My father's a wizard, but I never knew him much. From what I hear, he had quite the thing for Muggle women. Apparently I have half-siblings from twelve different states."

Penny's eyes widened a bit at that, but Susan only chuckled.

After the feast, they were shown to their Houses. The common room had a comfortable fire crackling merrily on the fireplace, and several chairs, tables, and couches arranged around the room for studying, playing wizard chess, or whatnot. Several paintings decorated the walls and waved to the students cheerfully as they came in.

"Ah, another year at Walton!" said a painting of a man with a mustache. "Welcome all!"

Penny jumped in surprise at the painting talking, and whispered, "Who is that?"

"That's our founder, Pajik Mevrasi," Rudy explained. "Don't be scared. He won't bite."

"Er, I'm sorry," Penny said to the painting. "Hello, pleased to meet you."

"Never seen a wizard painting before, have you?" Mevrasi said from the painting. "Muggle-born, are you?" Penny nodded. "Now, back when I attended Durmstrang, that's another wizard school over in Europe by the way, they were rather more picky about people's heritage. Tsk. They didn't know what they were missing out on. Oftentimes it's the half-bloods and Muggle-borns that come up with greater innovation than those dead-set in their traditions. They'd do well not to underestimate them so."

"In other words, we 'think outside the box'?" Penny said.

"Or the picture frame, as the case may be," Mevrasi said with a wink.

It was getting late, so Susan headed in for her dormitory to get settled in for the night, leaving Penny to chat with the painting of Mevrasi for the moment. Her belongings had already been brought up to her room, although they hadn't been unpacked yet. Penny's luggage was sitting at the end of the bed next to hers. Susan was too tired to unpack right now, though, so she just put on her pajamas and climbed into bed. It could wait until morning.

* * *

They started classes the next day and began to settle into a routine. Susan kept an eye out for Jami Tratch and his cronies trying to bother them, but they didn't usually dare do more than poke them when Timothy or Rudy were around. Otherwise, they just went along with their classes for the most part. At least the only classes they had together were Herbology and Defense Against the Dark Arts.

"You're so much better at Potions than me," Susan said with a bit of a sigh one day at lunch. "I don't know how you do it. I do everything it says but it doesn't turn out quite as good as yours."

"Well, there's more to it than just what it  _says_ ," Penny replied. "Besides, you're way better than me at Charms. I mean, you might not have levitated that feather on your first try, but at least it did  _something_ other than just sit there."

"I don't think setting things on fire instead of making them float into the air was quite what Mrs. Betts had in mind, though," Susan said dryly.

"At least you got it on the third try. Third time's the charm, I guess."

On the way from lunch to their next class, which was Transfiguration, they stopped by the girl's restroom. When they stepped out of the restroom again, they saw Jami Tratch and three of his buddies waiting for them outside. Susan stopped dead in her tracks and gave the boys a dirty look, and said, "What do you want?"

"Look, boys, it's the blood traitor and the Mudblood away from their babysitters," Jami said, poking Susan repeatedly. "Let's show them what we think of them."

The four Venari boys proceeded to bombard them with minor, annoying jinxes. Susan tried to block what she could, but she felt pimples breaking out all over her face. One of the larger boys punched her in the nose, and she felt something wet running down her face.

Mercifully, a teacher appeared from the end of the corridor and demanded, "What is going on here?"

The boys quickly backed off and tried to look innocent. "Nothing, Mrs. Rose." Susan wiped her face, but her hand came back red.

"Get off to class right now," she said to the boys. "Five points from Venari for each of you,  _and_ detention." Jami and his friends scurried off to class before they lost more points. Mrs. Rose turned to the girls and cast a couple quick spells to remove the pimples and stop the bleeding. "I don't think anything is broken. I will escort you to class."

Susan rubbed her nose a bit as if to make sure it wasn't broken, and glanced over at Penny to determine if she was all right as well. Mrs. Rose led them off to their Transfigurations class. When the three of them stepped inside, Mr. Moore looked at them disapprovingly and opened his mouth to say something about them being late, but closed it again when he saw Mrs. Rose with them. As the girls took their seats, she quietly took the Transfiguration teacher aside and explained why they were late. He frowned and nodded, and let their tardiness pass.

After class, Penny whispered fervently to Susan, "Why are they so hostile toward us? It can't be just because my parents are Muggles."

Susan sighed and shrugged. "Some are worse about it than others. Venaris are all hotheads anyway. I hope they get expelled."

Rudy caught up with them, coming out from his own Potions class, "They won't be. Venaris are given far too much leeway on that account. They'll get away with nothing but lost points, detentions, and maybe they'll have to attend Anger Management classes, but they won't expel them for something like that."

"Well, that doesn't sound very fair," Penny said.

"Life isn't always fair," Rudy said. "That's why a good Mevrasi needs to learn to make it unfair in your favor." He winked at them. "Just because they won't get expelled that way doesn't mean there's nothing you can do about it..."


	3. Papercuts of Doom

Rudy proved impressively knowledgeable about a wide array of creative methods to deter people. Or, at least, to strike back at them in a childish manner. He started out by showing them new uses for spells that they already knew. They practiced in an empty classroom near their dormitories after dinner.

"The key isn't always to learn new spells to do things, but to figure out how to use the spells you already have most effectively," he said. "Take, for instance, your usual first-year levitation spell. You can do a lot more with that than lift feathers, once you get the hang of it." Rudy demonstrated by levitating a large book.

Susan said, "Oh, so you could use it to drop things on their heads?"

"Or into inconvenient places?" Penny added.

"Exactly," Rudy said, grinning broadly as he let the book down.

They proceeded to levitate some sheets of paper to practice. Penny looked at her paper as it finally floated into the air and commented, "You know, if you did that right, I wonder if you could give someone papercuts that way..."

"Now you're thinking," Rudy said.

"But I guess it would take more than just levitation to do that," Penny said, frowning.

"You know, there's different words for levitating, summoning, moving an object," Rudy explained. "But when you think about it, they're all basically the same thing, in effect. You're still moving things, just moving them in different ways and different directions. Realizing that, you shouldn't have much trouble picking up the other spells that move things. It'll just take practice to get it to do what you want."

As Susan was practicing levitating a book, one of the teachers came in and saw them there. "What are you kids doing out of your dorms so late?" she asked.

Rudy replied smoothly, "I'm tutoring these first years with their Charms work, Mrs. Hawkins." Mrs. Betts taught Charms for the first and second year students, while Mrs. Hawkins taught it for the third and fourth years.

Mrs. Hawkins looked over to the book floating in the air in front of Susan, and said, "Ah, it's good that you're helping the younger students. Your diligence is commendable. Five points to Mevrasi. It's getting late and you should run along to your dorms now, though."

"Yes, Mrs. Hawkins," they said. Susan let the book down again and they gathered up their things and headed back to the Mevrasi common room. Once they were back there, they giggled over it a bit.

"See now," Rudy said. "That's what a good Mevrasi does. You just make them  _think_  you're doing something perfectly legitimate and innocent, and they'll let you do whatever you want."

They continued practicing with similar charms for the remainder of the week and that weekend. Although Susan and Penny had never been inattentive in class, it was almost tangible how much closer they listened to their teachers' lectures when considering what other applications they might put the spells and potions described toward. They were surprised to earn another ten points for Mevrasi without even trying or thinking about it.

That Saturday, Rudy was talking to them in the empty Charms classroom after lunch. "Now, you wanted to give that mean little Jami Tratch the pain of a thousand papercuts, hmm?" Rudy chuckled, and turned to Susan, "This spell is somewhat above your level right now, but you should be able to manage it with your natural aptitude for Charms, especially since it's only light objects. You can try it too if you like, Penny, but it may take a good deal of practice to manage it."

Penny nodded. Susan asked, "What is the spell?"

Rudy arranged a stack of paper in front of him and pointed at it with his wand, and intoned, "Mobilipapyrus!" As he did this, the papers didn't just levitate as they had with the spell that they had learned in class, but scattered as if blown by a sudden gust of wind. Rudy had more control over them than that, though, and with a flick of his wand, they turned around in midair and stacked themselves neatly on the table again.

Penny clapped her hands together, impressed. "Oh, very nice," she said.

"Your turn, Susan," Rudy said, stepped back and nodding to the pile of papers on the desk.

Susan licked her lips and brandished her wand toward the papers, and said, "Mobilipapyrus!" The sheets of paper scattered uncontrollably about the room, one of them flying up and covering her face. "Ack!" she cried, brushing at the paper to clear her vision.

Rudy chuckled. "Well, they  _did_ move. It'll take practice to learn to control just  _how_ and  _where_ they move, though."

The door opened and another Mevrasi boy poked his head in and looked around at the mess Susan had made. "Hey, Rudy, Leo wants you down in the common room."

Rudy looked over to the door and gave a nod. "Okay, tell him I'll be right there." The other boy left, and Rudy turned to the girls and said, "Keep up your practicing. Remember, practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes better. There's no such thing as perfect." He winked and headed out the door.

Susan shrugged, and they continued to practice on their own for the rest of the afternoon, losing complete track of the time in the process and making quite the mess of the classroom. However, as amusing as it was to attack one another with flying sheets of paper, they did not yet have sufficient control to realize their goal of causing papercuts with it.

They didn't see Rudy at all the next day, and on Monday when they finally caught up to him at lunch, he told them, "Sorry, I can't help you with your Charms work this week. I have to play replacement Seeker on the House Quidditch team at the next game. Our regular Seeker is stuck in the hospital wing recovering from a nasty Potions accident."

So instead, they set about collecting some of the other first year Mevrasis to practice with them. While some of them would rather goof off instead, they did get three others in on it. The teachers were perfectly happy to let them use the empty classroom for practicing Charms, and didn't question just why they were practicing their Charms.

"Why are we moving paper around?" asked Tina Brightman, a small girl wearing Muggle braces.

Susan explained it away, saying, "It's good practice for moving bigger stuff. It should be really useful. Just imagine what you could do with it!"

They all assumed that she had simply found out about the spell by reading ahead. Although none of them were as good with it as Susan, they did slowly catch on, even though none of them could come close to making the papers neatly stack themselves like Rudy had. Susan and Penny continued to practice diligently the rest of the week, hoping that the team's regular Seeker would be able to come back after this game so that Rudy could teach them more fun spells. The others drifted on and off, some of them getting bored of it after a couple days and going to play around or do their actual homework instead.

The next Saturday, Susan and Penny went to see the Quidditch game. It was Mevrasi versus Venari, and students and visitors displayed colors and symbols in support of their favored teams. The two teams, the Mevrasis wearing yellow and the Venaris wearing red, circled around the field once before starting. Rudy waved to the Mevrasis in the stand from his broom, winking in the general direction of Susan and Penny.

The match started off, and Susan watched excitedly as the Quaffle bounced around between players. She had never been particularly good with flying herself with her training broom, but she had always liked watching Quidditch. In the corner of her eye, Rudy was hovering in the air on his broom, keeping an eye out for the Snitch.

Rudy narrowly avoided a fast-moving Bludger sent in his direction by one of the Venari Beaters. He managed to dodge it, however, and looked over attentively as the opposing Seeker darted off like lightning in a seemingly random direction, apparently having seen the Snitch. Rudy shot off after him, gaining on him rapidly. Susan was impressed at the speed of his broom, and wondered obliquely where a fourteen-year-old had gotten such a good broom, especially one who wasn't even a regular member of the Quidditch team. Perhaps he was borrowing it from the team's usual Seeker.

The Venari Seeker turned aside suddenly, and Rudy narrowly avoided crashing, making a tight circle around the announcement booth and sailing higher into the air. But Susan noticed when he'd passed close to the stands that something bright and orange had lit on the end of his broom. She stood up and cried out, "Rudy's broom's on fire!"

The fire spread quickly, and by the time Rudy noticed it, he was dangerously far above the ground. Mrs. Hawkins stood up in front of Susan and pointed her wand at the broom and started casting spells at it to try to extinguish the flame. "It's not working," Mrs. Hawkins said, frowning deeply. "This is a very powerful spell."

"It looks like Rudy Blake's broom is on fire," came the voice from the announcement booth, stating the obvious. "Oliver King has the Snitch! That's game to Venari, one-hundred and fifty points to forty."

Meanwhile, Rudy was falling from the air, his failing broomstick unable to hold him any longer. As he fell, it looked like his robes had caught fire from the burning broomstick as well. Teachers scrambled out onto the field to try to help him, but Susan saw him fall from the sky like a burning comet. Panic rose up in her unbidden. Would he be alright? What could have done such a thing, and more importantly, who?

The announcer said, "Please, everyone leave the stands in an orderly manner. The teachers will handle the situation. Don't go onto the field."

Susan craned her neck trying to get a good view of what was going on, worried about Rudy. She couldn't see where he had fallen, though, but the grass around that area had caught fire as well. Mrs. Hawkins went down to help while Mrs. Betts tried to herd the students back in the general direction of their dormitories.

Back in the Mevrasi common room, a couple of the teachers were trying to calm down the students. The Mevrasis were the ones most upset about it, since it was one of their own who was hurt. Eventually, the students were dispersed into doing homework or studying while they waited for dinner and bedtime. Susan and Penny nervously took seats at the desk underneath the portrait of Pajik Mevrasi, unable to even think about studying right now.

Penny sank down into her chair once things settled down a bit, and said quietly, "I hope he'll be alright..."

Mevrasi's image looked down at them and said, "Has one of my pupils been injured?"

Susan explained, "He was playing Quidditch, and his broom came close to the stands and the end of it caught fire. Mrs. Hawkins tried to put own the fire but couldn't. She said it was very powerful."

Mevrasi frowned deeply, looking thoughtful for a long moment. "Could someone have recovered the Orb of Flame, then?" he murmured, mostly to himself.

"What?" Susan said, looking up at him and raising an eyebrow.

Mevrasi shook his head. "No, don't worry yourself about it. It's probably just my own paranoia. I hope your friend is all right." He wouldn't give any further information on the matter.

* * *

When they went to dinner, they learned that Rudy was alive but had been badly burned by the flames. It had taken eight teachers to put out the fire before it spread too far, and there was still a large blackened spot on the Quidditch pitch. He would likely be stuck in the hospital wing for several weeks.

Unable to concentrate on studies or practicing their Charms, Susan spent that Sunday moping about the common room and trying to glean any information out of Pajik Mevrasi, but he just looked at her quietly and made faces at her. She eventually sighed and went to dig through her books to look for any reference to this Orb of Flame that he had mentioned. Skimming over her History of Magic book didn't turn up anything useful, however.

On Monday, she arrived early to her Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and the teacher wasn't present yet. However, Jami Tratch and hiss friends were already there as well, unfortunately.

"Did the blood traitor's boyfriend get hurt?" he said in a sickly annoying voice at her, poking her in the stomach annoyingly.

"Leave me alone," Susan said.

"Or what?" Jami asked with a smirk. He raised his wand and began, "Rict-"

"Mobilipapyrus!" Susan snapped, whipping her wand up and causing several sheets of paper to plaster themselves over his face and torso, effectively distracting him from the spell he was about to cast.

Jami stumbled back, clawing the papers loose from his face irritably. From the classroom door, Susan heard the sound of clapping, and she turned to see their teacher, Mr. Black, standing in the doorway and looking on approvingly. "An excellent example of the use of a movement charm as a defensive measure. Five points to Mevrasi." He waved his wand at Jami, and the papers pulled themselves off his body and neatly stacked themselves on the desk again. "And you should know better than to harass your fellow classmates, Jami. Five points from Venari."

Susan was very pleased at having earned points rather than lost them for some reason. Mr. Black went up to the front of the class and began a fairly dry lecture on simple jinxes and how to counter them. Jami was furious at Susan, however, and he sat nearby glaring at her at every opportunity, fuming quietly.

"You aren't going to get away with this," Jami whispered to her vehemently on the way out of class, poking her in the back. "You're going to regret messing with the House Venari."

Susan grimaced. She determined to get back to practicing her spells, and to figuring out uses for other ones against him. But there was also the question of the Orb of Flame that she wanted answered. It didn't seem like it would readily answer itself at the moment, however.

Over the next week, she set about working on her spells and delving through what books on magical artifacts she could find, often to the neglect of her actual, more boring homework like Herbology, which she had been supposed to write up an essay on the various uses of a plant which she couldn't actually remember now. Penny sighed and covered for her on that, but she was a little annoyed about it.

"There has to be something somewhere..." Susan said, sighing in frustration. "Maybe I should just ask a Glemarn or something."

The next weekend, they were allowed to go see Rudy, who was slowly recovering from the attack on him - and an attack it must surely be, Susan was convinced. There was no way something like that could have been a mere accident, but it didn't seem like the school was investigating it overmuch. Not, she mused darkly, that they were likely to share their findings with a pair of concerned first years.

"So, how are you two getting on with your studies?" asked Rudy. He was covered in bandages, and it made him look rather like a mummy.

"We're doing okay," Susan said. She lowered her voice. "Rudy, we heard something suspecting that it might have been something called the 'Orb of Flame' that did this to you. Have you ever heard of that? Do you know what that might be?"

Rudy thought for a long moment and said, "No, but for some reason I think I should. Venari's House symbol is a ball of fire. Maybe there's some connection? Where did you hear about it?"

"From the portrait of Pajik Mevrasi," Susan said.

Rudy grunted. "That portrait is like none other I've seen. Most seem real at first but after a while you realize they're just an echo of the person they're of, and they can't really do more than give advice or repeat things they said in life. But Mevrasi's portrait is different somehow. It's like there's more to it than usual. He actually seems to think and feel and know what he's talking about."

"You think he could tell us more about it?" Susan said. "But he wouldn't talk about it any more."

"He was being awfully stubborn," Penny added. "I wonder what he's hiding?"

"Visiting time is up, kids," said the healer as she approached from the doorway. "Scurry on now, Rudolph here needs his rest."

"Yes, Miss Maisha," they said reluctantly and headed out of the hospital wing.

As they left the hospital wing and headed back toward the Mevrasi common room again, however, they encountered Jami Tratch once again in the corridors, with two of his friends. He looked rather annoyed and when he saw them he decided to take it out on them, whipping out his wand at them without even a taunt.

Susan blocked his first attack, and said, "What are you-" and was cut off by needing to block another jinx. "Argh. Mobilipapyrus!"

A stack of papers pulled themselves out of a passing Glemarn's hands and hurled themselves like small racing brooms toward the attacking Venaris, slashing at them like swords and causing a number of tiny papercuts over their hands and faces before landing in a disorderly pile on the floor. Jami screamed aloud and uttered some foul words before making a beeline back toward his own dormitory. The Glemarn girl looked fairly surprised and bent over to gather up her homework again.

"Sorry about the mess," Susan said to her once Jami was out of earshot. She grinned to herself a bit more and trotted back to the Mevrasi common room in high spirits.

"You did it!" Penny said excitedly. "You got the spell to cause papercuts!"

Susan was so pleased with herself that she actually did her Herbology homework herself.


End file.
